The Myth of the Key from an Outdoor Perspective. Applications of Biographical Concepts in Educational Settings: A Case Study.

Egger, Rudolf

The applications of biographical concepts in educational settings were examined through a case study of one researcher's use of the biographical narrative interview to examine the connection between subjective and structural conditions and coping strategies in individual lives and to inform adult education practitioners. The biographical approach illustrated in the case study is based on the writings of F. Schutze, who has used examples of biographical "trajectories" or "changing processes" to show how structures dominate biographies for long periods and how social science and educational researchers can use narrative interviews to reconstruct individual actions in the framework of social situations. According to Schutze, a recapitulation of experiences contains the following cognitive figures: (1) the biography holder or event holder; (2) the frame of events and experiences; (3) situations, life milieus, and social structures as the setting of orientation and condition; and (4) the real shape of life history. These cognitive figures constitute a kind of dynamic landscape in which the basic process-structures of life courses can be rebuilt in the following attitudes: (1) the biographical action scheme, which shows individuals as the creators of their own biography; (2) institutional patterns for the life-course procedure; (3) life "trajectories"; and (4) transformation processes. (Contains 10 references) (MN)